Pride x Familiar

by Albert Ruckholdt

  If I had to describe it, the place did look like a company headquarters…if you ignored the fact it was inside a cavern somewhere deep in Island Three and the building was cut into a rock wall.

  Laurence remained in the driver’s seat. Leaning out of the open window, he indicated the entrance. “You girls are expected so go on ahead. I’ll take you back when you’re done.”

  Again we shared looks amongst ourselves, then hefted the straps of our school carry-bags onto our shoulders and walked up to the glass doors of the entrance.

  I had no doubt we were scanned and identified even before the doors opened.

  As a group, we stepped into the cool lobby of the building. Maya led the way over to the concierge’s counter.

  The girl seated behind it smiled at us. “Team Galatea?”

  Maya frowned. “Huh?”

  The girl swept a hand before us. “Are you ladies not from Galatea Academy?”

  “Yes, we are. Is that what we’re designated as?”

  “It’s how I have you here,” the girl replied, indicating the holo-screen floating above her desk which was situated behind the counter.

  I thought Maya would sigh, but instead her shoulders rose and fell a little. “Then I guess that’s us.”

  “Very well, you’ve been cleared to go through, but your instructor isn’t here yet. Please make yourselves comfortable. She’s on her way and won’t be long.”

  Maya nodded and bowed respectfully. “Thank you.”

  We followed suit, then by silent decree stepped a few meters away from the concierge’s desk.

  Rina whispered. “Team Galatea? We’re a team now?”

  Maya shrugged faintly.

  Constance was looking about the place’s corporate style interior. “Not how I pictured things.”

  I kept my expression neutral but nodded once in agreement.

  A couple of minutes later, a woman in her early to mid-twenties entered the lobby from a set of glass security doors at the far end of the room. She strode over to us with the impression of great power held barely in check. Her long raven hair was tied back into a ponytail, and a couple of hair clips kept her bangs out of the way.

  Rina described her best with a whisper. “She’s so pretty….”

  Yes she was, and the more I looked at her, the more familiar she appeared to me.

  The young woman was dressed in a black and grey skinsuit that reminded me of bike riding leathers. The material stretched around her chest. In fact, it was partially unzipped in order to give her impressive bust air to breathe.

  “…and big too,” Rina muttered, sounding morbidly depressed.

  Maya softly clicked her tongue in agreement and displeasure.

  Constance whispered, “Not fair. So not fair….”

  It was clear all four of us were hosting similar feelings as the young woman walked up to us.

  “A little late, aren’t we?” she asked without formality.

  Now that she was up close to us, I gave her a long, studious look. She noticed and returned my stare but I didn’t look away.

  She really was familiar, or should I say she reminded me of someone.

  Maya stiffened but bowed politely, distracting me a little. We had no choice but to follow her example.

  “My apologies,” Maya said.

  I thought she might explain why we were late but she made no effort to do so.

  I realized there was no point explaining. The busty instructress wasn’t interested in explanations. In her opinion it would probably be a waste of more time. What she clearly wanted was punctuality, not tardiness.

  “Fine. You’re here now,” the woman said. “Let’s get started. Follow me and don’t fall behind.”

  I glanced at the others, keeping my emotionless mask firmly in place, while thinking the same thing they were.

  Rude. This woman didn’t even have the decency to introduce herself.

  Maya shook her head tightly, warning us all not to say anything, then hurried after the skinsuit clad woman.

  I had the impression Maya knew something but was not letting on.

  Through the glass security doors at the end of the lobby, and down a short corridor, she led us to a section that resembled a training room or gym. Then she instructed us into an adjoining change room with lockers and benches running between them. We were told to pick out free lockers, and learnt these would be assigned to us from now on. As it happened we chose lockers that were all adjacent to each other.

  The woman left us for a while, then came back with four white bathrobes.

  She spoke without room for argument. “Strip out of your uniforms and into these. Then follow me.”

  Maya asked, “May I ask why?”

  The woman dropped the bathrobes onto the bench. “You’re getting new skinsuits. Artemis skinsuits, not the low quality crap you’ve probably been using until now.”

  Constance tensed but I reached out and touched her arm.

  The girl shot me a glare but held her tongue.

  I knew that my skinsuit was high-grade, and there was no doubt so was Constance’s. We hadn’t been told to bring them, but that didn’t give this woman the right to refer to our equipment as crap.

  The woman folded her arms under her sizeable bust. “What are you waiting for? Strip—now.”

  I was growing more and more uncomfortable with the way we were being treated.

  Constance looked unhappy and Rina looked distinctly depressed.

  But Maya nodded just once and began undressing.

  Again, we had no choice but to follow her example.

  I sensed the woman watching us even with my back turned to her.

  Then she called out sharply, “Peligree, come here.”

  I half turned and saw Constance had stopped while undressing. She was in her underwear, a cotton ensemble of light pink panties and bra. “Ma’am?”

  “Come here.”

  The girl clenched her jaw, but she stepped up to the woman.

  The instructress walked around her. “That’s a nasty scar. A piercer field, was it?”

  “Yes…ma’am….”

  Constance had her back to Maya, Rina and I, yet I noticed her shiver when the woman studied her chest.

  Then the instructress said, “Losing your head in the heat of battle. This is what this scar symbolizes.”

  I couldn’t see the look Constance gave the young woman, but it must have been venomous, because the busty woman narrowed her eyes sharply.

  The instructress nodded in satisfaction. “Good. That’s the look I want to see. You’ve got fire in you.” She leaned down into Constance’s face. “But let me making something abundantly clear. You lose your head on your time. Not on my time. While you’re here you follow instructions to the letter, and if you don’t you’d better have a damn good reason for not doing so. Is that clear?”

  I noticed Constance swallow then straighten her shoulders. “With all due respect, but we haven’t even started training, so I don’t deserve the way you’re treating me.”

  “Consider it special consideration for a special case.”

  “That’s enough.” Maya’s voice cut between them. She stepped up to the busty instructress. “If you have an issue with a member of my team, you talk to me first. Is that clear?”

  The young woman nodded. “Good. Spoken like a team leader. The Commander has high hopes for you, Maya Khayman afil Sora.”

  “I appreciate that, Silia Alucard Raynar,” Maya replied smoothly. “However, I’m not here for the Commander’s sake.”

  “On the contrary,” the young woman stated, “but you’ll understand in due time.”

  While watching the scene between the women, I realized my body had subconsciously finished undressing. Padding barefoot over to the bathrobes, I took one and slipped into it.

  Rina was dressed in a robe too. She sidled up to me and whispered, “Did she say Alucard?”

  I nodded very faintly.

  Silia Alucard Raynar. That meant
this woman was the Countess’s older sister. Arisa had told me Silia Alucard was an Artemis that served with Caelum’s sister.

  No wonder she looked familiar.

  And no wonder she was so large.

  A trait that runs in the family.

  Damn, so unfair.

  And yet, why is her hair raven dark? Did she dye it? Or maybe it was the Countess who dyed her hair that odd ash grey color.

  Silia Alucard stared at the two girls standing before her. “You’re wasting time. Get moving.”

  A few moments went by before Maya and Constance deigned to walk back to the lockers and resume undressing. It was clear they were unhappy with the way Alucard was treating them.

  I couldn’t help watching Constance slip out of her underwear.

  I saw the scar she bore clearly now.

  It was a deep pink diagonal line that began from her lower right midriff, ran across her chest and between her breasts, before ending at her left collar bone.

  In time it might fade away until it was barely noticeable. But for now, she wouldn’t be wearing anything revealing, not unless she wanted to display the scar for the world to see.

  I guess a bikini is off the books for her now.

  Constance noticed me staring. The girl glared at me for a heartbeat before she turned away and finished undressing. She picked up the last bathrobe and put it on.

  Now all four of us were dressed in nothing but the bathrobes.

  No, that wasn’t right. All four of us wore our Fragments under the bathrobes. In my case, I had the two bracelets and anklets on me.

  “Let’s go,” Silia said impatiently. “Time to get you fitted and tuned.”

  #

  (Caprice)

  The new skinsuits were indeed different from what I’d been given by the Lanfears.

  It felt lighter, and easier to move in.

  However the tuning process took almost two hours.

  The first phase was a basic calibration with us lying on a table with cables attached to the skinsuit.

  The second phase required us to perform simple movements, then more complex ones as time progressed.

  Then there was a final tuning phase that felt like my skin was bonding to the suit’s interior layer. When it was over I felt naked though I was still dressed in the black and gun-metal grey material.

  Each of us wore neural contacts. The devices resembled large hair clips, and attached to the skin over our temples. It took a while for me to grow accustomed to them. In fact, after a half hour wearing them I still wasn’t used to their presence. But they were quite unlike the headset and visor I’d used before with my old skinsuit.

  I looked myself in the mirror, and I had to admit the skinsuit looked snug on me.

  The boots were flat heeled, but that didn’t matter since I’d be wearing the Valkyrie Armor over the skinsuit’s feet, legs and forearms. I was instructed to summon the armor a few times to allow the technicians to adjust the skinsuit to the Fragment. I wore the skinsuit over my Fragments, yet the armor locked onto my body regardless of the material that lay between it and the bracelets and anklets.

  That wasn’t the case for Maya. Her skinsuit had slightly shorter sleeves than mine, and lacked the connecting gloves that I wore. Her hands and wrists were bare, and her Fragment bracelets were clearly visible.

  I had no idea why our Fragments were so different, but I refrained from asking.

  After what felt like an eternity having my skinsuit adjusted to work in conjunction with the Valkyrie Armor, I was finally freed from the technicians. While waiting in an empty corner of the large laboratory-like fitting room, Rina walked over to me.

  I glanced at her wrists. “Where’s your Fragment?”

  She held up her right arm and tapped her wrist over the skinsuit. “Under here.” She grinned. “Maya had to have her sleeves cut. When her Fragment manifested, her gauntlets sliced up the lower sleeves of her skinsuit.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that. It surprised the techs.” I glanced at around discretely, and saw Constance was finishing up too.

  Rina inhaled deeply, then made the decision to wave the girl over.

  We both saw Constance hesitate for a noticeable moment. Then she bowed her head a little and stiffly walked over to us. She stood beside Rina, which meant the latter was sandwiched between Constance and I.

  Rina noted, “So you get to wear the full skinsuit too.” She giggled. “Poor Maya. I bet she’s annoyed.”

  I shrugged lightly. “So long as it doesn’t affect her performance, I’m sure she won’t mind.”

  I gave Constance a sidelong glance, but the girl said nothing.

  Then Rina muttered, “I really don’t like her.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “That Silia Alucard.” Rina crossed her arms over her small chest and pouted. “Her breasts are super-sized and annoying. She came up to me and poked me all over. She told me to lay off the sweets and lose some pounds. I don’t even have a sweet tooth.”

  “But you ate my pizza,” Constance pointed out. “It’s no wonder you’re getting fat.”

  “I’m not fat,” Rina protested with a sour look. “I just haven’t lost my baby fat.”

  I was about to disagree, but Constance spoke first.

  “No, Alucard is right. You’re going to have trouble keeping up with us.”

  Rina shot the girl an angry look, but then turned away with a troubled one instead. “I can’t help it. I only Awakened a little over a month and a half ago. The Soras didn’t begin training me until they found a Fragment I was compatible with.”

  To my surprise I planted a hand on her shoulder and said, “Just stick close to us. We’ll cover you.”

  “But lay off the extra pizza,” Constance warned, “and we’re not going to carry you if you fall behind.”

  Rina started to weep. “Pepperoni. Mozzarella cheese. Sweet onions. Anchovies.”

  “Shut up,” Constance warned. “Now you’re making me hungry. I should never have given you my pizza.”

  Rina wailed and threw her arms around Constance who was so shocked I saw the whites in her eyes.

  “Connie—what am I going to do?”

  “Stop calling me that,” the taller girl complained. “My name’s Constance. You hear me?”

  I stared at Rina. Wasn’t this girl supposed to be shy? She rarely spoke during the three briefings we had in the Student Council President’s office. In fact, she gave me the impression of a meek little cat that was doing its best to remain in the background.

  But this Rina was rubbing her face in Constance’s average chest and whining about all the delicious pizza she was going to miss out on.

  Constance raised a fist over Rina’s head. “I’m going to hit you if you don’t let go.”

  Rina sobbed. “Connie—don’t be mean to me.”

  I saw Rina look up at Constance with such a forlorn look that the latter actually stuttered.

  “Y—you—you—what are you doing? Stop looking at me like that?”

  “Connie….”

  Constance looked conflicted. She seemed to be battling against a torrent of mixed emotions that locked her body and expression rigid.

  Then, just when I saw her begin to relax, Rina muttered loudly, “You smell nice…like pizza.”

  “Aggh,” Constance yelled and thumped the girl over the head.

  #

  (Caprice)

  Three hours after we arrived at Artemis Industries we finally found ourselves on the cusp of commencing training.

  We also found ourselves standing on a balcony, looking out over a habitat that was every bit as complete as the habitats inside Island Three.

  What threw me off was the fact this habitat was a training habitat.

  Rina spoke in a hushed, awed voice. “Wow. It’s so big.”

  Constance wondered, “Is this real? It looks real. I mean, I’ve never seen a holo-image this detailed before. You’d need a hundred thousand projectors for something this big.”

>   I understood what she meant. The habitat appeared to be a complete environment, yet it was hard believe something like this existed inside Pharos. I counted roughly eighteen blocks stretching into the distance, and twelve blocks from left to right. That made it roughly a third the length and breadth of a full sized habitat. There was even a mag-lev network running between the buildings.

  I stepped closer to the balcony railing and looked down at the buildings and streets below.

  There were people down there walking the sidewalks, and vehicles on the streets. The sounds of a habitat reached my ears, complete with the throng of commuters on foot and driving in automated cars. The place really did look like a populated environment. But there was something odd about the populace.

  My Fragment told me they weren’t real.

  They were holovids surrounding the ubiquitous bowling pin shaped robots that performed automated tasks within a habitat, including sentry and maintenance duties. In other words, there was a bowling pin robot inside every holovid person I saw down on the streets below.

  That made for a lot of robots.

  Maya stepped up beside me. “The buildings and cars are real, but the people are not. That’s so weird.”

  I nodded. “I think it’s going to feel even weirder when we start training in there.”

  My Awareness tingled. I sensed a number of people enter the balcony from the entrance behind us. Maya and I both turned to see Silia Alucard and three other young women dressed in matching skinsuits form a line abreast of her. I didn’t have to ask to know this was her Artemis squad.

  The four women, including Alucard, gave us rather dismissive looks. Their superior attitude was beginning to get under my skin, and thereby my skinsuit.

  Maya stepped forward, and by an unwritten consensus Rina, Constance and I fanned out behind her.

  Maya asked politely, “Are we to begin training now?”

  Silia Alucard shook her head. “Not exactly. First, we want to see what you can do right now. We’ll use that to determine how much training you’re going to need, and where to start from.”

  I noticed Maya dip her head slightly. “You’re not going to induct us into basic training?”

  “No, because most of you have been training individually for many, many months. Unfortunately, that doesn’t include pudgy over there.”